Blake & Mortimer

I had a quick read of a few pages of a Blake & Mortimer book in the library and decided it seemed the sort of thing I'd like, old-fashioned adventure; but wanted to start at the beginning.  So I ordered the first three books, making up 'The Secret of the Swordfish'.  I was a bit disappointed really.  The artwork changes for a section in the middle of one of them - maybe the artist was off sick?  But what I found annoying was all the descriptive writing, as here 'And the swordfish, travelling across the great submarine lock...'.  Surely the point (or one of them) of a graphic novel is that we can see what is happening, it doesn't need to be described in words?  This made it feel sort of immature, expect the story is quite adult in that people are killed all the time, and its not 'cartoon' violence.  Also there was not a single woman in the whole story.

Anyway I stopped reading some of the descriptive boxes.  And I did like the submarine sections.  I'll probably persevere if I can find some cheap copies.